Those who follow automotive content creator Adam LZ on YouTube will be aware that he lives an interesting day-to-day life surrounded by performance cars and other like-minded people.

He found his feet on YouTube at an early age and one of the first cars that helped launch his career was his E46 BMW 3-Series sedan, a car that he has had since he was 16.

This custom build is notable for being a sleeper, with mighty performance potential from a new powertrain, hidden under a mundane 4-door sedan body and plenty of patina.

Let’s see how he turned up the heat on this BMW M3-rivalling machine to the point where it makes 3 times the power that it did in the beginning.

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Adam LZ’s Car Collection Just Got Cooler With An Engine-Swap BMW 3-Series

Adam LZ is a BMX rider who got famous through YouTube and today entertains us with his various exploits involving car mods, drifting and much more.

He drives many cars including a Ford Mustang GT350, Nissan Skyline, Nissan 240SX, Porsche 911 and many others, but his first car was the BMW 3-Series from this video.

It is originally a BMW 325i, a car which would have come with a 6-cylinder, 2.5-liter engine and around 190 hp, but he got an S54 engine (the 3.2-liter, 6-cylinder engine from the E46-era BMW M3) fitted in an engine swap that transforms the car.

It isn’t just any S54 engine, either – it’s an engine from HorsepowerFreaks that the team managed to coax more than 600 hp out of; now it’s the centerpiece of this BMW build which essentially creates a custom BMW M3 sedan.

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This Is What Adam LZ Drives Now: The 550 HP BMW M3-Style Sleeper

Adam LZ BMW E46 project on dyno, front quarter view of car in garage
Via: YouTube via Adam LZ

During the video, we see Adam and the team documenting the car, including his friend from @RKTunes, we find out more about the BMW project’s status as get it on the dyno to see how it performs.

With 550 hp, this S54 BMW engine is powerful – up to 3 times more powerful than the stock engine, and with the standard ECU still in the vehicle on ‘pump gas’ it’s impressive; but it isn’t without its issues.

Due to an issue with the exhaust setup, the car isn’t running at its full potential and so will need further tweaks to get it up to Adam LZ’s standard – though it sounds and goes well enough.

The car also has a manual gearbox and various other upgrades to go along with the S54 engine swap, so it holds a lot of potential for the future.

Either way, one of the appealing things about the build is how Adam keeps things looking ‘stock’ to conserve its ‘sleeper’ feel and that’s no bad thing.